Makoti

I keep saying that I want a Zulu wedding because I love how inclusive it is—anyone who wants to come and share your happiness, comes. Unfortunately this is not really possible in the States. Where is it not likely that the entire neighborhood and all female friends are likely to spend the entire weekend happily cooking for all these people.
If the wedding in itself is not hard to bring state-side, the traditions are. I already told you all about beading ucu and putting up the white flag, paying labola and the umbondo ceremony, but I seemed to have forgotten an important part of this process—being a makhoti. Perhaps I let this slip my mind because if future in-laws did decide they wanted to do things Zulu-style, I would be in trouble.
Before a woman is to become a man’s wife, she endures the makhoti period. In essence, I guess “makhoti” could stand in for the western “fiancé,” but it comes with more responsibility. It is a trial period for the wife-to-be, living alone with her future in-laws and abiding by their every wish. This includes waking up early every morning to make their tea, iron their clothes, draw their baths. Tasks can include re-plastering their floors—floors that are made by relayering it with cow dung every year. The makhoti answers to her in-laws every beck and call. If they chose, their makhoti can become close to a slave, but I am sure they are usually not that cruel. This lasts until the parents decide that the bride-to-be is a fit for their family and can handle the tasks that might await her.
Eek! It is kind of funny, but probably because I don’t have to do it [I don’t think?].

What made me think of this was last Sunday at Mtho’s party. I wore a scarf on my head, which traditionally married women are to wear, but also makhotis—and with my young face, I looked like I was a makhoti, as all the older women insisted on telling me. I wrapped my hair because 1. I couldn’t figure out how to wash my hair while crouching in that little tub and trying to bathe myself, and 2. because if I showed all the signs of being married, perhaps no one [i.e. men] would talk to me.
Well, my plan was only a bit successful as a guy being introduced to me said, “Ngiyakuthanda” within 30 seconds of shaking hands, expressing his love for me before proposing. Of course he was joking. But his mother, who I met a few hours later, was not.
“Hello, I am Denti. I would like to be your friend. Can we exchange phone numbers?” phone numbers are exchanged. “That right there is my son.” I notice her pointing to the guy with the machete, hacking at the slaughtered cow, and then realize he is the same guy who proposed to me earlier. “Yes, my son. That is my son. He is very nice, yes, very nice. He is going to the University of Natal! To get his degree! Yes, yes. That is my son, right there. You see him? He is strong. Very, very strong. Did you meet my son?” A smile from her as she takes my hand and leads me closer to the skinned cow and the young man cutting it. “Yes, right here, this is my son. Very nice, very strong.”